Dragon Age 3 - Team Seconded to SWTOR?

May 8th, 2012, 23:21

Take this with a grain of salt but market analyst Michael Pachter believes a "significant portion" of the Dragon Age 3 team was moved over to SW: The Old Republic to help boost end-game content, delaying DA3 into 2014. From GamesIndustry.biz:

Dragon Age III appears to have slipped to FY:14. We had previously expected the next Dragon Age to be released in Q4:13, two years after its predecessor. However, we believe that a significant portion of the BioWare team responsible for the game was reassigned to Star Wars in order to create content and fix bugs to keep the game's audience engaged," Pachter commented.

As much as people point to the EA/Bioware merger as the unholy union responsible for Bioware's recent decline in game quality, I'm more inclined to believe SW:TOR is the real reason.

I have a feeling that they've been skimping on the time designated for their existing game franchises to pull team members away to the MMO. Obviously a lot hinges on the success of the SWTOR for Bioware. MMOs require a lot of babysitting to make sure players get a steady stream of content/updates and that ends up taking priority over everything else to keep subscription numbers high. That's why I don't tend to cheer when a company announces a new MMO - usually it means that everything else will take a backseat (if it hasn't already).

Just my theory. Though I agree with Count Chocula that maybe this will be a blessing in disguise and allow the team working on DA3 to fine tune things a bit more. Then again, the game could sit in limbo waiting for the work on SW expansion packs to finish…

Originally Posted by Stingray
Once all the money is invested to create the cash-cow MMO, everything else in the company is secondary to it. Will happen with Zenimax as well.

Well it's bound to happen as you make billions instead of a few paltry million on a single game. Just look at blizzard. I don't like it but hey the suits do. Bioware's focus and manpower has been focused on TOR for years. That is probably why the other projects are always lacking recently.

As for the newsbit I wouldn't be surprised. Dragon Age II was developed by a team of castoffs and rookies. So it really doesn't give me hope.

That isn't necessarily a delay into 2014, EA's calendar and financial years are out of sync- their Q4 2012 report is already released, for example despite it being only May 2012. Most of FY2014 will be in calendar 2013.

Yep, this is why it's a bad idea to have one studio working on multiple projects where the costs, revenue, and demands of one are potentially orders of magnitude greater than the others. While having separate studios allows for less flexibility in moving around man-hours, it also ensures that small projects aren't easily consumed by larger ones. I mean imagine if EA had only one monolithic non-sports subsidiary developer; pretty much anything that wasn't a yearly FPS installment or The Sims would look like a tiny expendable venture by comparison in terms of revenue base.

I would view the assignment or consolidation of multiple somewhat concurrent projects to a single developer by direction of its parent company as a sign that the parent company does not consider each project's continued development to be an mid-term priority.

Yeah, exactly, doesn't make sense to put monthly subscriptions on some $200-300M project at risk, just to keep the schedule on (or avoid cancelling) some dinky single-player game.

Anyway, technically BioWare Austin (SWTOR) is a separate studio from their two in Canada. So I don't think it being a "separate studio" actually matters much, it needs to be a separate company. Zenimax Online vs Bethesda is the same deal, and in that case the two are both in the tiny state of Maryland as well, so there may be even tighter coordination.

No, I didn't say that….but if you thought it was crap why would you waste money on it? The first one was definately not crap….and the second one had some redeeming qualities. So dump the whole series instead of trying again…yeah ok.

Originally Posted by rune_74
No, I didn't say that….but if you thought it was crap why would you waste money on it? The first one was definately not crap….and the second one had some redeeming qualities. So dump the whole series instead of trying again…yeah ok.

I liked DA:O, yes, that's why I couldn't wait to get DA2 and ended up pre-ordering… then I was absolutely disgusted. I didn't play ME3 but reaction was certainly more inclined towards negative than positive. So yeah, I'm really cautious about Bioware products now. I say, if its going to be like DA2, I'd rather not see it at all. But ofcourse it will eventually come out and I guess I will wait and see how people react before I spend money on it this time… my hopes aren't too high though.

I don't think that ESO will effect Bethesda's games because they alreay have around 250 people working on ESO that have experience in mmo's and also ESO is much more of a risk then Bethesda's games so in-case ESO isn't successful they will need the revenue from the single player games. Also more money is more money so having both Bethesda's games and ESO be successful means far more money then each separately.

Well that may be wishful thinking, but the reality is that MMOs demand a lot more resources than single player games post-release (and maybe even pre-release), and MMOs have the potential to be much more profitable, and if not, a huge resource hole. It's looking worse for the Elder Scrolls franchise. They'll be little worthwhile left.

normally, and after the disaster (imho) that was DA2, I'd be ecstatic about the news of DA3 being pushed back. But since its just because they have less guys doing it, instead of because they want to take their time developing it, it makes little difference.

Originally Posted by rune_74
Yeah wouldn't that be great, one less rpg. You get the award for not the brightest comment.

Seriosly? Well, great for you if you call things like DA2 an RPG. I however don't even remotely. While I would love to never see another so-called RPG from EAware ever again, I don't care even remotely enought anymore.